College volleyball beat its week-old viewership record by a solid one million viewers Sunday, thanks to television’s most-powerful lead-in.
Airing immediately following the NFL in most of the country, regionalized college volleyball action averaged a 0.9 rating and 1.66 million viewers on FOX — the largest college volleyball audience of any kind on record. Viewership obliterated the previous regular season record set a week earlier on Big Ten Network (Wisconsin-Nebraska: 612K) and surpassed the largest national championship audience ever on the ESPN networks (2021 Nebraska-Wisconsin: 1.20M).
The telecast likely ranks among the most-watched volleyball telecasts of any kind — including beach volleyball — outside of the Olympic Games.
Most of the country — 76% — received the Wisconsin-Minnesota match immediately following a 1 PM ET NFL game on FOX. That 1 PM NFL window included Packers-Vikings, meaning that in both Wisconsin and Minnesota the local NFL team led directly into the flagship college squad. The remaining portion of the country received Ohio State-Michigan leading into Browns-Seahawks.
Beyond the local tie-in, the singleheader lead in was particularly potent this week — averaging a season-high 19.98 million.
The singleheader-adjacent window has become prime sports TV real estate for smaller properties. The 1.66 million for volleyball this week follows 1.19 million for professional bowling on FOX the previous week and audiences of 1.93, 1.84 and 1.42 million for professional bull riding on CBS.
To put the numbers in perspective, no game of the women’s college basketball regular season had as large an audience. The top audience was 1.47 million for South Carolina-LSU on ESPN Super Bowl Sunday.
